“What do you know?” Xavier asked.
Gwen dug her fingers into the seat edge. Leaned forward.
Reed looked Xavier right in the eye. “Nothing, man.”
Xavier shook his head at the ground. When he raised it, he wore an ugly smile. “I’ll ask you again. What do you know?”
“I’m paid to know nothing. You think I’d jeopardize that?”
Reed swiped off his skull cap and scrubbed at his head. She recognized that sign; she’d seen it several times since they’d met, but only now just pieced it together. He may be a poker player, but he wasn’t a good one. What a tell. He was uncomfortable, not anywhere near at ease as what he was projecting.
Xavier turned his head and found her eyes through the windshield. “She’s gorgeous.”
Reed did not look at her. “Yeah. So?”
Xavier’s pause was as long and cold as winter on the tundra. “So I guess we’ll have to see whether you earned that pay.”
As the Range Rover descended down the lake house driveway, Gwen spotted Nora and Adine waiting for them on the front stoop. She’d been distracted by soothing Genesai during the trip back and hadn’t paid attention to Xavier. What had that stupid watch told him? What had he typed into it?
Nora was waiting for her. That couldn’t be anything but bad.
The wind blew hard, snatching leaves from trees and throwing them around the circular drive. It smelled like snow might be near. The two women—mother and daughter—looked so very different. Adine’s dull brown hair whipped about her head and she fruitlessly kept trying to shove it behind her ears. Nora had abandoned her regular loose garb for leggings and a plain, long-sleeved T-shirt. With her tighter clothing and close-cropped hair, the wind seemed not to touch her. Nothing seemed to touch her.
Xavier hopped out of the car. For about one point three seconds, it was just Genesai, Reed, and her in the Range Rover. She imagined Reed gunning the engine, swooping back up the drive, and busting out of the black gate. They’d race toward San Francisco at warp speed. She had Genesai, she had Reed; she’d find a way to make this end the way it should.
Then she caught Nora’s stare through the tinted windows and that fantasy vanished.
In a daze and using him as a crutch, Gwen guided a blanketed Genesai over to Nora.
“Tell him I am glad he is here,” Nora said, her hands clasped together like the fakest of kindly grandmothers.
“I recognize that voice,” Genesai said with wonder. “She used to visit me. I never understood her and she never understood me.”
Gwen translated between them without thinking, staring at an unseemly crack in the stoop brickwork.
“It’s wonderful he remembers.” Nora laughed. “Everything in this world is still so new to him. Think about it. He doesn’t know how a telephone works. He doesn’t know to look both ways before crossing a street.”
Gwen glanced at Xavier, who was shifting on his feet, his jaw clenching tightly. Not too long ago, Nora could have said the same about him.
“And,” Nora added, drawing Gwen’s attention with her raspy bite, “he doesn’t know how to lie. Isn’t that amazing?”
That Gwen didn’t translate.
Her soul was weary. She couldn’t even muster a sneer. Nora had her by the balls and the little Tedran knew it.
Nora’s false smile vanished. “Adine will take you and Genesai down to the ship.”
Gwen blinked. “Now?”
“Yes. Now.”
“This way.” Adine gestured around the south edge of the house, still trying to get control of her hair.
Arm still around Genesai’s shoulders, Gwen whispered where they were going. He shivered in excitement.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Reed move to follow them—follow her—as he’d been paid to do.
Nora called out, “Not you, Reed. We need to talk.”
THIRTY-TWO
Without thought, Gwen swiveled toward Reed.
He shrugged at Nora. “Sure.” One hand reached up and scrubbed at his head.
Gwen watched him turn into the house, Nora at his heels, and a terrible sinking feeling threatened to level her.
Xavier stepped in front of her, blocking her view of the door. He examined her face, and she feared what he saw there because at that point she was incapable of disguising her dread. He looked satisfied, sure of himself.
“Go.” He prodded her toward Adine.
Did she have any other choice?
The ground passed under her feet in a blur. Genesai shifted under her arm, and she loosened her intense grip. Adine led them to the end of the dock and told them to wait while she went to the boathouse.
The gray choppiness of Lake Tahoe called to Gwen. In the rush that morning, neither Reed nor Xavier had remembered to give her nelicoda. For the first time in nearly a week, she could sense the greatness of the water’s pull, listen to its language that rang like music. Like people, each body of water—no matter how great or how small—had its own voice. So, so easily she could dive into it, blend into the lake, touch what made her Ofarian. Disappear.
Except that Genesai and the Tedrans depended on her. And Nora had Reed up at the house.
Last night she’d wholeheartedly, unquestioningly given Reed her trust. It was now his to protect or disregard. She refused to believe that Nora would drag out his duplicity. Gwen had glimpsed Reed’s gentle soul. He wouldn’t sell her out to save himself from Tracker.
Would he?
The door of the boathouse rolled up and back into the roof on a near-silent mechanism. Out chugged a sleek, silver bullet-shaped watercraft. It smoothly parted the water on its way to the end of the dock. Adine popped out of the hatch, smiling shyly.
“This submarine,” Gwen told Genesai, stumbling to find an appropriate word in his language, “is going to take us down to your ship. I need to remove the blanket.”
“Yes.” Genesai shook with excitement. “Yes, yes. Take it off.”
When she did, he didn’t look with fear up at the big, sunny sky, but with astonishment at the submarine bobbing before him.
Gwen and Genesai climbed in, then crouched knees to chest in the small space. Adine sat in a swiveling seat, her hands dancing over the controls. Pinprick interior lights blinked to life. Water sloshed against the small, circular portholes.
The craft pulled away from the dock and dove. Down and down. Slithering, shadowy weeds slid off the submarine’s sides like snakes. Looking up, Gwen could see diffused light dancing on the top layer of the lake. The feeling of traveling in the submarine was similar to what nelicoda did to her body—so close to water and yet unable to touch it.
As they descended, they passed through a watery twilight and into a starless night. The portholes darkened to black. The craft hissed, its systems adjusting to Adine’s commands.
Genesai couldn’t stop touching the bulkhead. He never sat still. Eyes wide with fascination, he rattled off questions about the sub’s construction and operation. Gwen translated for him, and then repeated Adine’s enthusiastic responses. It was the most she’d ever heard Adine say, and Gwen was surprised to learn the petite half-Tedran owned a dry wit.
Gwen let her mouth participate in the exchange, but her thoughts were back at the house, with Reed.
Unexpectedly, Genesai slid his hand over hers. Such a human gesture.
Adine maneuvered the submarine in slow, smooth movements through the murk and blindness. Never once did she consult a map or diagram, which made Gwen wonder just how many times she’d visited the ship while Genesai had been longing to see her for over a century.
“Almost there,” Adine whispered.
Genesai pressed his nose to a porthole and Gwen joined him. The submarine’s headlamps swept diffused light into the depths. Dark fish darted out of their way, scattering the lake particles that resembled swirling snow.
Genesai gasped and pointed. Gwen stared hard into the gloom, unable to discern anything. “I don’t see her,” she said.
Her eyes adjusted…and there she was. Genesai’s ship rested on the lake bottom. Imposing. Stirring. Monumental.
“She looks like part of the lake,” Gwen murmured. “Like she belongs here.”
“Camouflage,” Genesai replied, his voice choking. “When we are in the sky, she looks like she belongs there.”
Though Ofarian by blood, Gwen was still a product of Earth and her imagination had been shaped by pop culture. She’d pictured the spacecraft that had carried her ancestors as hulking and gray, a cold machine made of hard angles and sharp edges. Genesai’s ship was none of those things.
The submarine approached her from the bow. Even though she had been created on another world, through the eyes and mind and hands of a nonhuman, there was an undeniable femininity about the ship. A humanity.
The bow resembled a face. A wide, squat front porthole posed as a seductively curved mouth. The great dome of her forehead swooped back like a brilliant mane of hair swirling in the waves. The hull rippled like a dress fluttering in the breeze. Her beauty equaled that of an exquisitely carved statue. She was a woman through and through, destined to soar through the sky and make men weep.
“She is so beautiful,” she told Genesai.
“Yes.” Then he addressed Adine. “Move along starboard. There’s an airlock halfway back.”
Adine shook off her surprise; clearly she’d never noticed any airlock before. As she swooped the little craft down the right side of the ship, Gwen got a good look at its size. It could easily hold two Plants’ worth of Tedrans. Camouflage or no, how its presence managed to stay secret all these years was beyond her.
“There!” Genesai’s finger thrust toward a pale oval set into the hull. “There’s the door!” If that tiny thing was the door, there was no way any of them was getting in. “Is there an extendable arm on this craft?”
Adine looked playfully offended. “Of course there is.”
A motor whirred to life, and the submarine bobbed as the arm loosened itself from the side. It looked just like a human arm, with a hand and everything. Adine gave Genesai a special glove, which he slid onto his right hand. When he opened and closed his fingers, the arm in the water echoed his movements. Adine looked exceptionally proud, while Genesai murmured something about fascinating but clunky technology. Gwen spared Adine that translation.
Genesai stretched the arm toward the white oval. With one finger he drew characters in his language on its surface. Midnight blue lines appeared briefly in the finger’s wake then dissipated, but not before Gwen could read them.
My love. I have come back.
The water shivered. Adine’s hands scrambled over the sub’s controls to keep it steady.
Outside, Genesai’s ship sprang to life. Hundreds of tiny lights along the bulkhead sparked and rose to a dull glow. They lined her underbelly, accentuated the sensuous curves of her shape, and gave gorgeous accent to her feminine bow.
Gwen dreamed of how she’d look soaring between the stars.
Open the airlock, please, Genesai wrote on the white oval.
A mass of huge bubbles lurched out from the hull. The airlock door, easily twice as large as the sub, slid upward. Water surged into the ship, dragging them with it.
“This is incredible,” Adine murmured as she steadied the sub in the ship’s dark interior. “Better than when Pong came out.”
A crown of lights beamed down from the ceiling, turning the water around them from pitch black to merely cloudy. The airlock door slid shut. Water began to drain from the chamber. As the water level lowered, the sub came to rest, tilted like an egg, on the ship floor.
Gwen itched to get out, to explore. She wasn’t the only one. Adine lunged for the hatch lock but Genesai stopped her with a curt gesture. He stretched the robotic arm out and touched another white oval set into the chamber wall. “I need to tell her how to calibrate the air for our bodies,” he said. “It’s different for me now.”
“Fascinating.” Adine was practically licking the glass.
Genesai drew complex equations and calculations. When he was done, he nodded at Adine, who popped the hatch. A whoosh of manufactured air circulated inside. It smelled wet and stale, like a towel soaked in lake water and left out to dry.
Genesai scrambled out, Adine and Gwen on his heels. The floor wasn’t hard like metal or wood, but slightly pliant. The walls were midnight blue, smooth and seamless, as though she’d been scooped out of some fantastical material and molded like clay. Water dripped down the walls in shimmering waves on its way to an unseen drain. The effect, paired with the dark walls and pale overhead lighting, was eerie and spectacular.
Genesai fell against the wall near the white oval. Cheek pressed to the blue surface, he extended both arms out, caressing her. The sigh that escaped his body was deep and long and a hundred and fifty years in the making.
Gwen thought she felt the ship sigh, too.
Deep red words appeared inside the white oval. I have missed you. What took you so long?
Genesai smiled through his tears.
You seem different, the ship said.
“I’m not,” he whispered as his fingers drew the same words onto the oval. “I may look different, but inside I am not.”
It would never matter to the ship what Genesai looked like, what form he took. She was not influenced by what had happened to him or how he lived, what he was or was not capable of. Devotion was an impenetrable word, trust an indestructible link.
All Gwen could think of was Reed’s horror as she’d showed him Mendacia. How he’d shoved her away in disgust from that kiss.
The water separating them felt as formidable as concrete.
Genesai reluctantly pushed away from the wall and beckoned Adine and Gwen to follow him. The passageways rose twice as tall as an average human. Gingerly taking steps over the strange floor, Gwen understood how Earth’s astronauts must have felt when they first walked on the moon. Or how her own ancestors must have reacted upon finding Tedra and then Earth. They walked through something magical, something alive.
Gentle light filtered from somewhere unseen. All along the walls, at regular intervals, were placed white communication ovals. As Genesai stopped to draw something on one of them, Gwen reached out, without thought, toward the wall. She snatched her hand back before she made contact.
Red characters danced on a nearby oval.
Let the yellow-haired one touch me. Let her know what you created.
Gwen gasped. The ship could see her?
Genesai turned, wearing a knowing smile. “Would you like to touch her?”
“Very much,” she breathed.
Adine lunged for the wall the same moment as Gwen. Together they pressed both palms to the wall. Its substrate was the same as the floor, deep blue and with a slight give, but strong. Its warmth shocked, but also soothed. Gwen could swear the ship hummed, and not from hidden machinery.
Adine took a deep breath and Gwen braced herself for the Tedran’s barrage of questions. Only one came: “What’s she made of?”
“Nothing you’ve seen in this world.” Genesai ran his knuckles around a white oval. “Nothing your ancestors saw in theirs.”
Gwen pushed herself away. “Will she fly?”
Genesai indicated the meandering passage before them. “Let’s find out.”
They entered a perfectly round room with a high, domed ceiling. At the far end was the short, wide porthole Gwen recognized as the bow. They were in the cockpit, only there was no seat, no hand controls, not even a single computer or screen. Just one white communication oval.
Genesai motioned for the women to remain in the doorway and went to stand in the center of the room. There the floor wasn’t midnight blue, but white. He stretched for the wall oval then dropped his arm, frowning.
“What is it?” Adine poked Gwen. “What’s going on?”
“I used to be able to stand here and touch it,” he said, looking down at his hands in dismay.
>
“His new body,” Gwen whispered to Adine. “It doesn’t match with how he designed the ship.”
“Does that actually matter?”
Gwen raised a hand to hush her.
Genesai fumbled with the tie of his baggy pants, let them drop to his ankles, then kicked them away. He wore no underwear. His ghostly teenage body stood in stark contrast to the dark room. He started to examine himself, walking his fingers over his limbs and mumbling. When he was satisfied, he approached the white oval and skated his fingers over it.
Adine jabbed Gwen’s ribs again. “What now? What’s he telling it?”
“What he looks like. How tall he is, how long his limbs are.” Gwen squinted to follow the mad dash of blue words. “Now he’s talking about his blood.”
“Why?”
Gwen didn’t have to answer. Genesai showed them.
In the center of the room, his powder white feet blended in with the floor. He stood so still she wondered if he breathed. Adine nudged her, but she barely felt it. Genesai transfixed her.
The floor moved, cracked. Two thin white tubes detached themselves from the floor. Swaying in a nonexistent breeze, they rose, snakelike, to stretch for Genesai’s body. They wrapped themselves around his arms, elongating. White ribbons against white flesh.
Little thorns popped out of the tubes, injecting into Genesai’s skin. She and Adine jumped, hissing in sympathetic pain, but Genesai just smiled in rapture and basked in this bittersweet homecoming.
Swirls of blood flowed from Genesai into the tubes. The red was sucked into the ship’s belly.
Down, down, down we come. Into fire, into water. Up, up, up we go. All together, with blood.
With blood.
“I’m checking her diagnostics.” Genesai’s conversational tone startled her. “I need to make sure she’s healthy. And I need to adjust some systems so she can accept and use my new blood.”
She translated before Adine could poke her again.
The entire room exploded into a myriad of lights, colors, and shapes. The warm, pliant wall burst into graphs and charts, numbers and lists, and hundreds of other images Gwen had no way to classify.
Liquid Lies Page 27